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curranthro-theory-building

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Use when building the conceptual/theoretical argument of a Current Anthropology (CA) manuscript into an agenda-setting, all-fields contribution that can anchor the CA✩ comment-and-reply Treatment — whether the work is ethnographic, archaeological, biological, or linguistic. CA rewards a portable, debatable concept and reflexive argument over a bare finding or thick description alone. Structures the argument; it does not run analyses or write fieldnotes.

Current-Anthropology-Skills/skills/curranthro-theory-building/SKILL.md

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# Theory & Argument Building (curranthro-theory-building)

At CA, evidence is not a contribution until it is attached to an **argument other anthropologists can
use — and argue with — elsewhere.** A Major Article anchors the **CA✩ Treatment**: international
commentators will press the concept, the mechanism, and the scope. So the argument must be **bold enough
to be worth commenting on** and **robust enough to survive published critique with the author's Reply
still standing**. This skill turns fieldwork, material, or measurements into theory: explicit concepts,
mechanisms or interpretive logics, scope conditions, and **positionality**, in the idiom of your subfield.

## When to trigger

- The ethnography/data are rich but the conceptual payoff is thin or too safe to commentate on
- A reviewer said the paper is "descriptive," "undertheorized," or "just a case"
- You need to state concepts, mechanisms, and scope conditions explicitly
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